Chapter XI: Introduction: The Boy Companies (9)

They found a new patron in the Elector Palatine, then in England, and on entering his service got a new patent, which bears date 11 January 1613 and closely follows in its terms that of 1606.[553] The house specified for them was again the Fortune, which they had no doubt continuously occupied since its opening in 1600. The players named were ‘Thomas Downton, William Bird, Edward Juby, Samuell Rowle, Charles Massey, Humfrey Jeffs, Frank Grace, William Cartwright, Edward Colbrand, William Parr, William Stratford, Richard Gunnell, John Shanck, and Richard Price’. Possibly Price may be the Pryor of the 1610 list. Cartwright and Gunnell are new since that list, but Cartwright had been in _The Battle of Alcazar_ and _1 Tamar Cham_ plots of 1601 and 1602. These two must be supposed to have taken the places of Thomas Towne and Antony Jeffes. Thomas Towne had enjoyed an annuity of £12 out of Alleyn’s manor of Dulwich from 28 October 1608 to 15 January 1612, but on 5 November 1612 ‘widow Towne’ is mentioned,[554] and further evidence of his death is supplied by a letter from Charles Massey to Alleyn, not dated, but from internal evidence written not very long after the prince’s death, to which reference is made. Massey is in debt and wants £50. He offers two things as security. One is ‘that lyttell moete I have in the play hovsses’; from which it may be inferred that, like Downton, he had obtained an interest in the Fortune, although what the second house may have been can hardly be conjectured. The other is his interest under ‘the composisions betwene ovre compenye that if any one give over with consent of his fellowes, he is to receve three score and ten poundes (Antony Jefes hath had so much) if any on dye his widow or frendes whome he appoyntes it tow reseve fyfte poundes (M^res Pavie and M^res Tovne hath had the lyke)’. In order to be in a position to repay the loan at the end of the year he undertakes to get Mr. Jube to reserve ‘my gallery mony and my quarter of the hovse mony’ for the purpose, and should it prove at the end of six months that this will be insufficient, he will be prepared to surrender his whole share, with the exception of 13_s._ 4_d._ a week for household expenses.[555] From this letter it may also be gathered that Antony Jeffes had retired, and apparently that Pavy, whose name is found in the plot of _2 Fortune’s Tennis_, which I assign to 1602–3, had at some time become a sharer in the company. One other player, originally in 1597 a hired man, had evidently reached some prominence between that date and 1614. William Fennor, in the course of a rhyming controversy with John Taylor, makes the following boast of his histrionic talent:

And let me tell thee this to calme thy rage,
I chaleng’d Kendall on the Fortune stage;
And he did promise ‘fore an audience,
For to oppose me. Note the accidence:
I set up bills, the people throngd apace,
With full intention to disgrace, or grace;
The house was full, the trumpets twice had sounded,
And though he came not, I was not confounded,
But stept upon the stage, and told them this,
My aduerse would not come: not one did hisse,
But flung me theames: I then _extempore_
Did blot his name from out their memorie,
And pleasd them all, in spight of one to braue me,
Witnesse the ringing plaudits that they gaue me.[556]

As the Elector Palatine’s men the company played at Court during the winter of 1613–14, twice before James and once before Charles. They were amongst the companies which performed irregularly in the Lent of 1615, and Humphrey Jeffes and Thomas Downton were summoned before the Privy Council to account for their misdoing. One of the irregular licences condemned by the Lord Chamberlain on 16 July 1616 was an exemplification of the patent of 1613, taken out by Charles Marshall, Humphrey Jeffes, and William Parr for provincial purposes.

xx. THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN’S (LORD HUNSDON’S) AND KING’S MEN

Henry Carey, s. of William Carey and Mary, sister of Anne
Boleyn; _nat. c._ 1524; cr. 1st Lord Hunsdon, 13 Jan. 1559;
m. Anne, d. of Sir Thomas Morgan; Warden of East Marches and
Governor of Berwick, Aug. 1568; Lord Chamberlain, 4 July 1585;
lived at Hunsdon House, Herts., and Somerset House, London;
_ob._ 22 July 1596.

George Carey, s. of Henry, 1st Lord Hunsdon; _nat._ 1547;
Kt. 18 May 1570; m. Elizabeth, d. of Sir John Spencer of
Althorp; Captain-General of Isle of Wight, 1582; succ. as 2nd
Baron, 22 July 1596; Lord Chamberlain, 17 Mar. 1597; lived at
Carisbrooke Castle, Hunsdon House, Drayton, and Blackfriars;
_ob._ 9 Sept. 1603.

A company of Lord Hunsdon’s men was at Leicester in the last three months of 1564, at Norwich and Maldon in 1564–5, at Plymouth before Michaelmas in 1565, at Canterbury in the autumn of 1565, at Gloucester and Maldon in 1565–6, at Bristol in July 1566, and at Canterbury in the spring of 1567. Another makes its appearance at Ludlow on 13 July 1581, and at Doncaster in 1582. In the winter Lord Hunsdon was apparently deputy for the Earl of Sussex as Lord Chamberlain, and took occasion to bring his men to Court, where they acted _Beauty and Housewifery_ on 27 December 1582. They did not again appear at Court, but when plays were temporarily suppressed on 14 June 1584 the owner of the Theatre, presumably James Burbadge, made a claim to be Lord Hunsdon’s man. Meanwhile ‘my L. Hunsdouns and my Lords Morleis players being bothe of one companye’ are recorded at Bristol in March 1583, and Lord Hunsdon’s alone at Norwich in 1582–3, Bath in June 1583, and Exeter in July 1583. Hunsdon became Lord Chamberlain on 4 July 1585. Between October and December of that year, a visit was paid to Leicester by ‘the Lord Chamberlens and the Lord Admiralls players’, and on 6 January 1586 ‘the servants of the lo: Admirall and the lo: Chamberlaine’ gave a play at Court. These entries suggest an amalgamation of Hunsdon’s men with those of Lord Admiral Howard, both of whom had perhaps been weakened by the formation of the Queen’s men in 1583. But if so, it was only a partial or temporary one, for while the Admiral’s men established themselves in London, the Chamberlain’s are traceable in the provinces, at Coventry in 1585–6, at Saffron Walden in 1587–8, and at Maidstone in 1589–90.

An interval of four or five years renders improbable any continuity between this company and the famous Lord Chamberlain’s company, which first emerged on the resorting of the plague-stricken mimes in 1594, passed under royal patronage in 1603, and prolonged an existence illumined by the genius of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger and Shirley, until the closing of the theatres in 1642. The first notice of the new organization is in June 1594, when ‘my Lord Admeralle men and my Lorde Chamberlen men’ played from the 3rd to the 13th of the month, either in combination or separately on allotted days, for Henslowe at Newington Butts.[557] Some of the plays given during this period can be traced to the subsequent repertory of the Admiral’s men; others, which cannot, may be assigned to the Chamberlain’s. They are _Hester and Ahasuerus_, _Titus Andronicus_, _Hamlet_, and _Taming of A Shrew_, which, although so described, may of course have been really the _Taming of The Shrew_, Shakespeare’s adaptation of the older play entered in the Stationers’ Register on the previous 2 May. It is ingeniously, and I think rightly, inferred from a line drawn in Henslowe’s account after 13 June, that from that date all the performances recorded are by the Admiral’s men, probably at the Rose, and that his relations with the Chamberlain’s men had ceased. The company is found at Marlborough about September, and on 8 October Lord Hunsdon wrote to the Lord Mayor, asking permission for ‘my nowe companie’ to continue an occupation of the Cross Keys,[558] on which it seems to have already entered. Henceforward the company was regularly established in London, took the lead annually at Court, and except for brief periods of inhibition in 1596, 1597, and possibly 1601, does not appear to have travelled during the remainder of Elizabeth’s reign. Whether Hunsdon’s men got the Cross Keys for the winter or not, they probably had from the beginning the use of the Theatre for the summer seasons, for Richard Burbage, the son of the owner, was one of their leading members, and on 15 March 1595 appears as joint payee with William Kempe and William Shakespeare for two plays given at Court on 26 and 28 December 1594. These plays cannot be identified, but Shakespeare’s _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ and _Romeo and Juliet_ may well have been produced this winter.[559] Most likely the date 28 December was entered in the payment warrant by mistake for 27 December, for the Admiral’s men are also recorded as playing at Court on 28 December, and on the same night ‘a company of base and common fellows’, with whom one is bound to identify the Chamberlain’s men, played ‘a Comedy of Errors’ as part of the Christmas revels of the Prince of Purpoole at Gray’s Inn.[560] There seems to be some echo of _Romeo and Juliet_ in the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude of _A Midsummer-Night’s Dream_, which may very well have been given at Greenwich or Burghley House for the wedding of William Stanley, Earl of Derby, and Elizabeth Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford, on 26 January 1595. Another possible occasion for the production, however, is the wedding of Elizabeth, daughter of Sir George Carey and grand-daughter of Lord Hunsdon, to Thomas, son of Henry Lord Berkeley on 19 February 1596. This took place at Blackfriars, presumably in Sir George Carey’s house there.[561]

To 1595 or thereabouts I also assign Shakespeare’s _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ and _King John_ and _Richard II_.[562] The company played at Court on 26, 27, and 28 December 1595 and 6 January and 22 February 1596. In the warrant for their fees, dated on 21 December 1596, and made payable to John Heminges and George Bryan, they are described as ‘servauntes to the late Lord Chamberlayne and now servauntes to the Lorde Hunsdon’. It is clear that, when the first Lord Hunsdon died on 22 July 1596, the players had been retained by his son and heir, Sir George Carey. The Lord Chamberlainship passed to Lord Cobham; but he died on 5 March 1597, and on 17 March the post was given to the second Lord Hunsdon. The company, then, was properly known as Lord Hunsdon’s men from 22 July 1596 to 17 March 1597; before and after that period it was the Lord Chamberlain’s men.

To 1596 I assign Shakespeare’s _Merchant of Venice_. Evidence of the occupation of the Theatre about this time by the company is to be found in Lodge’s allusion to a revival of _Hamlet_ there, for this play is not likely to have been in other hands.[563] It is not an unreasonable conjecture that James Burbadge destined to their use the play-house in the Blackfriars, which he purchased in February, and had converted for ‘publique’ use by November of this year. If so, he and they were disappointed, for a petition of the inhabitants, amongst the signatories to an alleged copy of which Lord Hunsdon himself is somewhat oddly found, led to an intervention of the Privy Council, who forbade plays to be given within the liberty.[564] At this time also the Corporation seem to have succeeded in finally and permanently expelling the players from the City inns which had long been their head-quarters, and Nashe connects this persecution with the loss of ‘their old Lord’, by whom he doubtless means Henry Lord Hunsdon. It is possible that plays were inhibited altogether during the summer of 1596, although no formal order to that effect is preserved, for Hunsdon’s went to Faversham, and Nashe himself was disappointed of ‘an after harvest I expected by writing for the stage and for the presse’.[565]

In the following winter the company played at Court on 26 and 27 December 1596 and on 1 and 6 January and 6 and 8 February 1597. Their payees, for this and for the next two years, were Thomas Pope and John Heminge. In 1597 began the printing of plays written by Shakespeare for this company, with a ‘bad’ quarto of _Romeo and Juliet_, bearing on its title-page the name of Lord Hunsdon’s men and ‘good’ quartos of _Richard II_ and _Richard III_, bearing that of the Lord Chamberlain’s.[566] From the text of _Richard II_ was omitted the deposition scene, which did not appear in print until after the death of Elizabeth. The only Shakespearian productions that can be plausibly ascribed to this year are those of the two parts of _Henry IV_. The presentation of Sir John Oldcastle in the original versions of these seems to have led to a protest, and the character was renamed Sir John Falstaff. It is not improbable that the offence taken was by Lord Chamberlain Cobham, whose ancestress, Joan Lady Cobham, Oldcastle had married.[567] It is impossible to say whether either this scandal or any possible interpretation of disloyalty put upon _Richard II_ contributed to the inhibition of plays on 28 July, of which the main exciting cause was certainly the performance of _The Isle of Dogs_ at the Swan on the Bankside.[568] For the second time since their formation in 1594 the company had to travel. They are traceable at Rye in August, at Dover between 3 and 20 September, at Marlborough, Faversham, and Bath during 1596–7, and at Bristol about 29 September. This inhibition was removed early in October. There is some reason to believe that, when the Chamberlain’s men resumed playing, it was not at the Theatre, as to the renewal of the lease of which the Burbadges were disputing with their ground landlord, but at the Curtain. Marston, in one and the same passage of his _Scourge of Villainy_, entered in the Stationers’ Register on 8 September 1598, alludes to the acting of _Romeo and Juliet_ and to ‘Curtaine plaudeties’, while almost simultaneously Edward Guilpin in his _Skialetheia_, entered on 15 September, speaks of ‘the unfrequented Theater’. The transfer may, however, not have taken place until 1598.[569]

The company played at Court on 26 December 1597 and on 1 and 6 January and 26 February 1598. It is conceivable that one of these plays may have been a revised version of _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, which was printed as ‘newly corrected and augmented’ and ‘as it was presented before her Highnes this last Christmas’ in 1598. On the other hand, it is also possible that this print may have been intended to replace an earlier ‘bad’ quarto, not now preserved, and if so, the reference to the representation may have been carried on from the earlier title-page. In 1598 were also printed _1 Henry IV_, and the anonymous _Mucedorus_, which may have already belonged to the Chamberlain’s repertory, as it was certainly revised for them about 1610. _The Merchant of Venice_ was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 22 July, but with a proviso that it must not be printed ‘without lycence first had from the Right honorable the lord chamberlen’. On 7 September 1598 was entered in the Stationers’ Register the _Palladis Tamia_ of Francis Meres, with its list of Shakespeare’s plays up to date, including the mysterious _Love’s Labours Won_, which I incline to identify with the _Taming of the Shrew_.[570] The earliest play not mentioned by Meres is probably _Much Ado about Nothing_, which may belong to 1598 itself. Another production of this year was Jonson’s _Every Man In his Humour_, which was still a new play about 20 September, when an Almain in the audience lost 300 crowns. Possibly John Aubrey has this period in mind when he says that Jonson ‘acted and wrote, but both ill, at the Green Curtaine, a kind of nursery or obscure play-house, somewhere in the suburbes, I thinke towardes Shoreditch or Clarkenwell’.[571] Jonson, however, was in prison soon after the production of the play for the manslaughter of Gabriel Spencer on 22 September in Hoxton Fields, and there is no other evidence that he ever acted with the Chamberlain’s men. His own name is not in the list of the original ‘principall Comoedians’ affixed to the text of _Every Man In his Humour_ in the folio of 1616. This is of great value, as being the earliest extant list of the company. The ten names given are:

Will. Shakespeare.
Aug. Philips.
Hen. Condel.
Will. Slye.
Will. Kempe.
Ric. Burbage.
Joh. Flemings.
Tho. Pope.
Chr. Beeston.
Joh. Duke.

It must not, of course, be assumed, either that the list is in itself quite complete, or that there had been no changes amongst the Chamberlain’s men between 1594 and 1598; but as those named include five out of the six payees for that period, they may perhaps be taken, with the sixth payee, George Bryan, who does not reappear after 1596, and was by 1603 an ordinary groom of the Chamber of the royal Household, as fairly representing the original constitution of the company.[572] And an inference to its origin at once becomes possible, for of these eleven men five (Kempe, Pope, Heminges, Phillips, and Bryan) formed, with Edward Alleyn, the company of Lord Strange’s men to whom Privy Council letters of assistance were granted in 1593, and at least six (Pope, Phillips, Bryan, Burbadge, Duke, and Sly) are to be found in the cast of _2 Seven Deadly Sins_ as performed by Strange’s or the Admiral’s or the two together about 1590–1. It will be remembered that the Strange’s company of 1593, known as the Earl of Derby’s after 25 September 1593, was apparently formed by a combination of the earlier Strange’s and Admiral’s men somewhere near the time of this performance, if not earlier, and that its composite character never wholly disappeared, Alleyn in particular, who was its leading member, retaining his personal status as an Admiral’s man. It seems clear that in 1594 the combination broke up, that Alleyn became the nucleus of a new Admiral’s company at the Rose, and that the group with whom he had been travelling took fresh service with the Lord Chamberlain. It is not, I think, quite accurate to treat this transaction as a mere continuance of Lord Derby’s men under the style of Lord Chamberlain’s, entailing no reconstruction other than a change of patron following upon Lord Derby’s death on 16 April 1594. On the one hand a Derby’s company continued in existence, and is traceable under the sixth earl from 1594 to 1617. On the other hand, while we do not know what business reconstruction there may have been, a very fundamental change is involved in the replacement of Alleyn as principal actor by Richard Burbadge, who is not at all likely to have played with Strange’s men after the break between the Admiral’s and his father at the Theatre in 1591. Except for Alleyn, all the more important members of the company, as it existed in 1593, seem to have been included in the transfer to Lord Hunsdon. It is, however, little more than conjecture that finds Henry Condell and Christopher Beeston in the ‘Harry’ and ‘Kitt’, or Alexander Cooke, Nicholas Tooley, and Robert Gough, who were numbered amongst the King’s men at a later date, in the ‘Saunder’, ‘Nick’, and ‘R. Go.’ of the _2 Seven Deadly Sins_ plot. Alleyn’s correspondence of 1593 adds Richard Cowley to the list of Lord Strange’s men, and, as we shall find him acting as a payee for the Chamberlain’s men in 1601, he may have been one of them from the beginning. In any case he had joined them by 1598, as the stage-directions of _Much Ado about Nothing_ show that he played Verges to Kempe’s Dogberry.[573]

There is, of course, one conspicuous Chamberlain’s man who is not discoverable either in the Privy Council letter of 1593 or in the _2 Seven Deadly Sins_ of 1590–1. Even the audacity of Mr. Fleay has not attempted to identify the ‘Will’ of the plot with Will Shakespeare. Some relations, if only as author, Shakespeare must have had with Lord Strange’s men, when they produced _1 Henry VI_ on 3 March 1592, and Greene’s satire of him as a ‘Shake-scene’ in the same year must indicate that he was an actor as well as an author.[574] He may have stood aside altogether during the period of the provincial tours, and devoted himself to poetry, and perhaps, although this is very conjectural, to travel abroad. Or he may, as I have already suggested, have joined Lord Pembroke’s men (q.v.), whom I suspect to have been an offshoot for provincial purposes of the Strange’s combination, and have passed from them to Lord Sussex’s, ultimately rejoining his old fellows in 1594. The possibility of identifying certain minor members of the Chamberlain’s company is also affected by this somewhat obscure problem of Pembroke’s men. The most obvious of these is John Sincler or Sincklo, who was in the cast of _2 Seven Deadly Sins_ as played by the Admiral’s or Strange’s about 1590–1, and must have ultimately joined the Chamberlain’s, as his name occurs in a stage-direction to Q_{1} of _2 Henry IV_ (1600), and in the induction to _The Malcontent_ (1604). It also occurs in stage-directions to _3 Henry VI_ and the _Taming of The Shrew_ in the Folio of 1623.[575] These both happen to be plays which passed through the hands of Pembroke’s, and the inference may be that Sincler had also passed through this company. But this is far from being conclusive. It is the revised and not the unrevised texts that yield the name, and although I think it likely, on stylistic grounds, that the revision of _3 Henry VI_ was done for Pembroke’s (q.v.), it is probable from the reference in _Henry V_, epil. 12, to the loss of France and the civil wars, ‘which oft our stage hath shown’, that the play was revived by the Chamberlain’s, and it may have been in such a revival that Sincler took part. As to the _Shrew_, it is impossible to say whether Shakespeare’s work upon it was before or after its transfer to the Chamberlain’s. In any case the Chamberlain’s were playing it in some form on 13 June 1594, so that here again the appearance of Sincler’s name cannot ear-mark him as Pembroke’s. We can now go a step farther. The stage-directions to _3 Henry VI_ contain not only Sincler’s name, but those of a certain ‘Gabriel’ and a certain ‘Humfrey’, not common Elizabethan names even separately, and certainly suggesting, when found in combination, the Gabriel Spencer and Humphrey Jeffes, who were fellows of the Admiral’s in 1597. Now Spencer, and very likely also Jeffes, had come from Pembroke’s, the short-lived Pembroke’s of 1597 at the Swan. Had they been Pembroke’s men ever since 1593? If so, it would be difficult to resist the conclusion that the performance which brought their names into the text of _3 Henry VI_, and with theirs John Sincler’s, was one by Pembroke’s about that date. The obstacle is that there is no known evidence, in provincial records or elsewhere, for any continuous existence of Pembroke’s between 1593 and 1597. Pending the discovery of any such evidence, it seems better to assume that Sincler, Spencer, and Jeffes were all Chamberlain’s men before 1597, and that it was from a combination of discontented elements in that company and in the Admiral’s that the Pembroke’s of the Swan arose. If so, the rest of the Pembroke’s men not traceable as coming from the Admiral’s, namely Robert Shaw, William Bird _alias_ Borne, and probably Anthony Jeffes, may also have come from the Chamberlain’s; and such an origin might explain the suit with Thomas Pope in which Bird was entangled in 1598.[576] Two other minor actors in the company about 1597 were probably Harvey and Rossill, whose names appear to have got into the text of _1 Henry IV_ in place of those of Bardolph and Peto, whom they represented.[577] The list of actors in Shakespeare’s plays given by the editors of the First Folio includes Samuel Crosse, of whom nothing more is known except that he was of an early generation. As the list in the Folio appears to be limited to Chamberlain’s and King’s men, excluding for example Alleyn, who certainly acted in Shakespearian plays, e.g. _1 Henry VI_, it may be that Crosse was for a short time a member of the company soon after 1594.

It is hardly possible to carry the analysis of origins any further with profit, or to assume that the groups which segregated themselves from the Strange-Admiral’s combination in 1594 bore any close correspondence to the respective contributions of Strange’s and the Admiral’s to that combination in 1589 or 1590. The only name that can be connected with Strange’s men before 1588 is John Symons and neither he nor George Attewell, their payee in 1591, became a Chamberlain’s man. Hypotheses have been framed, mainly in the hope of affiliating Shakespeare to Lord Leicester’s men, who are supposed to have carried him away from Stratford-on-Avon when they visited it in 1586–7, and ultimately to have become Lord Strange’s men.[578] So far as Shakespeare is concerned, the first record of him on the boards is in 1592, and the interval since his hegira from Stratford may have been quite otherwise spent. The proof of continuity between Leicester’s men and Strange’s altogether fails, since the latter made their appearance a decade before the former came to an end. The only member of the Lord Chamberlain’s company of 1594 who can be traced to Leicester’s service was Kempe, and he had left Leicester’s men by the summer of 1586 and was in Denmark. With him were Bryan and Pope, who afterwards spent a year in Germany, and may have joined either Strange’s or the Admiral’s on their return. The only other Chamberlain’s man, who can be assigned to an earlier company than Strange’s, is Heminges, who was probably at some time a Queen’s man.

The Chamberlain’s men evidently started business in 1594 with something of a repertory derived by inheritance or purchase from antecedent companies. Our knowledge of this is mainly confined to plays with which Shakespeare was concerned as author or reviser. They certainly did not get all the plays produced by Strange’s men at the Rose during 1592 and 1593. Some of these were Henslowe’s property; others passed with Alleyn to the Admiral’s men. But they got _The Jealous Comedy_, if I am right in identifying this with _The Comedy of Errors_. They probably got _1 Henry VI_, for although the appearance of a Shakespearian play in the 1623 Folio is not perhaps, in view of the composition of the 1647 ‘Beaumont and Fletcher’ Folio, absolute proof that the King’s men possessed the copy, their stage had often shown both the loss of France and the bleeding of England before _Henry V_ was produced in 1599.[579] And they got _Titus and Vespasian_, as revised, after passing through the hands of Pembroke’s men, for production by Sussex’s under the title of _Titus Andronicus_. Three other of Pembroke’s men’s plays came to them, _The Taming of A Shrew_ and _2 and 3 Henry VI_, and probably _Hamlet_ belongs to the same group. It is of course only a guess of mine that these also went with Shakespeare to Sussex’s men and came thence with him. _Titus Andronicus_ and _A Shrew_, indeed, became available in print during 1594, but not _Hamlet_, and not _Henry VI_, except in the obsolete version called _The Contention of York and Lancaster_. I think Shakespeare must also have brought _Richard III_ and possibly an early version of _Henry VIII_, and that one or other of these had already been played by Sussex’s as _Buckingham_. Of the _provenance_ of _Hester and Ahasuerus_ nothing can be said. It is not necessary to suppose that the Chamberlain’s acquired any plays from the stock of the Queen’s men. It is true that Shakespeare subsequently made some use of _The Troublesome Reign of King John_, _The Famous Victories of Henry V_, and _King Leire_, but these were all in print before he needed them.[580] _Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany_, published in 1654 as a play the King’s men at the Blackfriars is believed by some to be an early play, possibly by Peele, and if so, may belong to the repertory of 1594.

I now return to the chronicle of the Chamberlain’s men from 1598 onwards. The restriction of the London companies by the action of the Privy Council to two had left them in direct rivalry with the Admiral’s at the Rose. Disputes broke out. Henslowe made a loan to William Bird of the Admiral’s on 30 August 1598 to follow a ‘sewt agenste Thomas Poope’, and another to Thomas Downton on 30 January 1599, ‘to descarge Thomas Dickers [Dekker] from the areaste of my lord chamberlens men’.[581] The company played at Court on 26 December 1598 and 1 January and 20 February 1599. During this winter they undertook the enterprise of finding a new head-quarters on the Bankside. The disputes between landlord and tenants as to the lease of the Theatre had reached a crisis, and in December or January the Burbadges removed the timber of the house across the Thames, to serve as material for the construction of the Globe. The lease of the new site was signed on 21 February 1599. Under it one moiety of the interest was retained by Richard Burbadge and his brother Cuthbert, who was not himself an actor; the other was assigned to Shakespeare, Pope, Phillips, Heminges, and Kempe.[582] Shortly afterwards Kempe made over his share to the other four. Presumably he now quitted the company, having first, as a stage-direction shows, played Peter in the revised version of _Romeo and Juliet_ printed in 1599. His place was probably taken by Robert Armin, formerly of Lord Chandos’s men, who describes himself in two successive issues of his _Fool upon Fool_ (1600 and 1605), first as ‘clonnico del Curtanio’, and then as ‘clonnico del Mondo’, and who had therefore probably joined the Chamberlain’s men before their actual transfer to the Globe. As the Theatre had to be built, this is not likely to have taken place until the autumn of 1599, and it must therefore remain doubtful which house was the ‘wooden O’ of _Henry V_, produced during the absence of Essex in Ireland between 27 March and 28 September 1599. It was, however, certainly at the Globe that Thomas Platter saw _Julius Caesar_ on 21 September.[583] ‘This fair-filled Globe’, too, is named in the epilogue to Jonson’s _Every Man Out of his Humour_, which is ascribed in the Folio of 1606 to 1599, although if this be correct, an apparent allusion to Kempe’s journey to Norwich in the spring of 1600 must, on the assumption that it is a real allusion, be an interpolation. The ‘principall Comoedians’ in this play were Burbadge, Heminges, Phillips, Condell, Sly, and Pope. Four of the 1598 names are missing. Shakespeare evidently stood aside. Kempe had gone. Beeston and Duke may have gone also, although it is only a conjecture of Mr. Fleay’s that they and Kempe now seceded to Pembroke’s men at the Rose, and they are not definitely heard of again until they are found with Worcester’s men in August 1602.[584] Mr. Fleay thinks that another Worcester’s man, Robert Pallant, had accompanied them; but, although Pallant was with Strange’s or the Admiral’s about 1590, there is no evidence that he was ever a Chamberlain’s man. Conceivably he may have joined the King’s men about 1619, but that is another matter.[585] About November 1599 was published _A Warning for Fair Women_, which belonged to the company.

The Court plays called for from the Chamberlain’s men during the following winter were on 26 December 1599 and on 6 January and 3 February 1600. Heminges was sole payee, and occupied the same position in every subsequent year, up to and beyond 1616, except in 1600–1, when Richard Cowley was associated with him, and for a special payment made to Burbadge in 1604. On 6 March 1600 the company had an opportunity of rendering direct service to their patron Lord Hunsdon, by playing _Henry IV_, still oddly called _Sir John Oldcastle_, after a dinner which he gave to the Flemish ambassador, Ludovic Verreyken, presumably at his house in the Blackfriars.[586] To 1600 I assign Shakespeare’s _Merry Wives of Windsor_, not improbably prepared for performance, with the aid of the boys of Windsor Chapel, at the Garter Feast on 23 April, and also _As You Like It_. This was a year of some activity among the publishers and, as in 1598, the company had to take steps to protect their interests. In May John Roberts was prevented from printing their moral of _Cloth Breeches and Velvet Hose_, until he could bring proper authority, and in August a note was made in the Stationers’ Register to stay the printing of _As You Like It_, _Henry V_, and _Much Ado about Nothing_.[587] The last two of these, but not the first, were in fact printed during the year, and so were _A Midsummer-Night’s Dream_, _The Merchant of Venice_, _2 Henry IV_, _Every Man Out of his Humour_, and _An Alarum for London_, all plays belonging to the company.

The Chamberlain’s men played at Court on 26 December 1600 and on 6 January and 24 February 1601. Shortly before this last performance, they had been involved in one of the tragedies of history. This was the abortive _coup d’état_ of 8 February 1601 in which the Earl of Essex, smarting under the disgrace which his failure in Ireland had brought upon him, attempted to secure his position and get rid of Sir Walter Raleigh and other enemies by taking forcible possession of the person of Elizabeth and the palace of Whitehall. Some of his followers seem to have conceived the idea of predisposing the mind of the populace to their cause by a dramatic representation of the dangers of evil counsellors and the possible remedy of a deposition, as illustrated in the case of Elizabeth’s predecessor Richard II, in whom for some obscure reason the political thought of the time was fond of finding an analogue to the Queen. Saturday, 7 February, the day before the outbreak, was chosen for the performance, and the players applied to were the Chamberlain’s. A deposition by Augustine Phillips, taken before Chief Justice Popham and Justice Fenner during the subsequent inquiries, records the transaction.[588]

‘The Examination of Augustine Phillips, servant unto the L.
Chamberlain and one of his players, taken the xviij^{th} of
February, 1600, upon his oath.

‘He saith that on Friday last was sennight or Thursday Sir
Charles Percy Sir Josceline Percy and the Lord Mounteagle with
some three more spoke to some of the players in the presence
of this Examinate to have the play of the deposing and killing
of King Richard the Second to be played the Saturday next,
promising to get them xl_s._ more than their ordinary to play
it. Where this Examinate and his fellows were determined to
have played some other play, holding that play of King Richard
to be so old and so long out of use that they should have small
or no company at it. But at their request this Examinate and
his fellows were content to play it the Saturday and had their
xl^{_s._} more than their ordinary for it, and so played it
accordingly.’

The fact that Phillips speaks of the play as old and long out of use, which becomes in the narrative of Camden ‘exoleta tragoedia’, hardly justifies the suggestion that it was something earlier than Shakespeare’s _Richard II_. This, if produced in 1596, may well have been off the boards by 1601.

A good deal of misunderstanding has gathered round the connexion of the Chamberlain’s men with this affair. Mr. Fleay is responsible for the theory that they fell into disgrace, had to travel, and were excluded from the Court festivities of the following Christmas.[589] As a matter of fact they played four times during that winter. This Mr. Fleay did not know, as he only had before him Cunningham’s incomplete extracts from the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber. But he ought to have noticed that their last performance for 1600–1 was itself some days later than the examination of Augustine Phillips. Nor is any evidence that the company travelled in 1601 forthcoming from the provincial archives. Mr. Fleay’s identification of them with Laurence Fletcher’s Scottish company of that year merely rests upon the presence of Fletcher’s name in the patent of 1603, and this will not bear the strain of the argument.[590] Thus remains, however, the possibly autobiographical passage in _Hamlet_, ii. 2. 346, which assigns an ‘inhibition by the means of the late innovation’ as a cause of the travelling of players to Elsinore. The date of _Hamlet_ may well be 1601, since the same passage refers to the theatrical competition set up by the establishment of boy companies at St. Paul’s in 1599 and at the Chapel Royal in 1600. But it must be borne in mind that this competition is the only reason given for the travelling in the 1603 edition of the play. In the 1604 edition the only reason is the inhibition, while in the text of the 1623 Folio both reasons stand somewhat inconsistently side by side.[591] No doubt the text of 1603 is an imperfect piratical reprint. On the other hand that of 1604 almost certainly represents a revised version of the play, and the ‘inhibition’ cited, if it had an historical existence at all, may be that of 1603, during which certainly the company travelled. I suppose that ‘innovation’ might mean the accession of a new sovereign, although it does not seem a very obvious term. But then it does not seem a very obvious term for a seditious rising either.[592] On the whole, there is no reason to suppose that any serious blame was attached to the Chamberlain’s men for lending themselves to Sir Gilly Meyrick’s intrigue. It is certainly absurd to suggest, as has been suggested, that the ‘adorned creature’, whose ingratitude instigated the comparison between Elizabeth and Richard, was not Essex but Shakespeare.[593] At the same time the company may, of course, have been told to leave London for a few weeks. At some time, as the 1603 title-page tells us, they took _Hamlet_ both to Oxford and to Cambridge, and it is at least tempting to find a reminiscence of the Cambridge visit in the scene from _2 Return from Parnassus_ cited below. It is possible that Phillips and his fellows, and even their relation to the Essex crisis itself, may be glanced at in the satirical picture of the Roman actors in Jonson’s _Poetaster_, produced by the Chapel boys in the course of 1601.[594] Certainly the play betrays its author’s knowledge of a counter-attack which the Chamberlain’s men were already preparing for him in Dekker’s _Satiromastix_. This play, in which Dekker may have had some help from Marston, was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 11 November 1601, and had probably been on the stage not long before. It is noteworthy that it was produced by the Paul’s boys, as well as by the Chamberlain’s men. It was actually published in 1602. Another play which may reasonably be assigned to 1601 is _Twelfth Night_.

In the following winter the company played at Court on 26 and 27 December 1601 and on 1 January and 14 February 1602. They also gave _Twelfth Night_ at the Middle Temple feast on 2 February;[595] and I have very little doubt that it was they who furnished the play at which Elizabeth and her maids of honour were present in the Blackfriars after dining with Lord Hunsdon on 31 December.[596] The alleged production of _Othello_ before the Queen when Sir Thomas Egerton entertained her at Harefield from 31 July to 2 August 1602 rests on a forgery by Collier.[597] It is possible that, as Professor Wallace conjectures, the play was on the capture of Stuhl-Weissenburg, seen by the Duke of Stettin on 13 September 1602, may have been a Globe production.[598] _Sir Thomas Cromwell_, a play of unknown authorship belonging to the company, was published in the course of 1602, with an ascription on the title-page to W. S., and to this year I assign Shakespeare’s _All’s Well that Ends Well_ and _Troilus and Cressida_. If so, the portrait of Ajax in the latter play cannot very well have been the ‘purge’ administered by Shakespeare to Jonson, to which reference is made in _2 Return from Parnassus_. This is a Cambridge Christmas piece, probably of 1601–2, and in it Burbadge and Kempe are introduced as in search of scholars to write for them. Perhaps the Cambridge author did not know that Kempe had ceased to be the ‘fellow’ of Burbadge and Shakespeare in 1599, and was at the time playing with Worcester’s men at the Rose. It is, however, just possible that after returning from his continental tour and before throwing in his lot with Worcester’s, he may have rejoined the Chamberlain’s for a while, and may have accompanied them to Cambridge, if they did travel in 1601.[599]

The last performances of the company before Elizabeth took place on 26 December 1602 and 2 February 1603, and on the following 24 March the Queen died. Playing immediately ceased in London. Strictly speaking, the Chamberlain’s men must have again become Lord Hunsdon’s men for a month or so, for the Household appointments naturally lapsed with the death of the sovereign, and Hunsdon, being in failing health, was relieved of his duties on 6 April. On 9 September he died.[600] The company, however, had already passed under royal patronage.

A contemporary panegyrist records the graciousness of James in ‘taking to him the late Lord Chamberlaines servants, now the Kings acters’.[601] The appointment was by letters patent dated 19 May 1603, of which the text follows.[602]

[Sidenote: Commissio specialis pro Laurencio Fletcher & Willelmo Shackespeare et aliis]

Iames by the grace of god &c. To all Iustices, Maiors,
Sheriffes, Constables, hedborowes, and other our Officers and
louinge Subiectes greetinge. Knowe yee that Wee of our speciall
grace, certeine knowledge, & mere motion haue licenced and
aucthorized and by theise presentes doe licence and aucthorize
theise our Servauntes Lawrence Fletcher, William Shakespeare,
Richard Burbage, Augustyne Phillippes, Iohn Heninges, Henrie
Condell, William Sly, Robert Armyn, Richard Cowly, and the rest
of theire Assosiates freely to vse and exercise the Arte and
faculty of playinge Comedies, Tragedies, histories, Enterludes,
moralls, pastoralls, Stage-plaies, and Suche others like as
theie haue alreadie studied or hereafter shall vse or studie,
aswell for the recreation of our lovinge Subjectes, as for
our Solace and pleasure when wee shall thincke good to see
them, duringe our pleasure. And the said Commedies, tragedies,
histories, Enterludes, Morralles, Pastoralls, Stageplayes, and
suche like to shewe and exercise publiquely to theire best
Commoditie, when the infection of the plague shall decrease,
aswell within theire nowe vsual howse called the Globe within
our County of Surrey, as alsoe within anie towne halls or Moute
halls or other conveniente places within the liberties and
freedome of anie other Cittie, vniversitie, towne, or Boroughe
whatsoever within our said Realmes and domynions. Willinge and
Commaundinge you and everie of you, as you tender our pleasure,
not onelie to permitt and suffer them herein without anie your
lettes hindrances or molestacions during our said pleasure, but
alsoe to be aidinge and assistinge to them, yf anie wronge be to
them offered, And to allowe them such former Curtesies as hath
bene given to men of theire place and quallitie, and alsoe what
further favour you shall shewe to theise our Servauntes for our
sake wee shall take kindlie at your handes. In wytnesse whereof
&c. witnesse our selfe at Westminster the nyntenth day of May
per breve de priuato sigillo &c.

Of the nine players named, eight are recognizable as the principal members of the Lord Chamberlain’s company as it stood at the end of Elizabeth’s reign. Only Thomas Pope is not included. He was near his end. He made his will on 22 July 1603, and it was proved on 13 February 1604. In it he names none of his fellows, unless Robert Gough, who has a legacy, was already of the company; his interest in the house of the Globe passed to legatees and was thus alienated from the company. Laurence Fletcher, on the other hand, whose name heads the list in the patent, is not discernible as a Chamberlain’s man. His inclusion becomes readily intelligible, when it is recalled that he had headed English actors on tour in Scotland, and had already been marked by the personal favour of James.[603] Whether he ever joined the company in the full sense, that is to say, the association of actors as distinct from the body of royal servants, seems to me very doubtful. His name is not in the _Sejanus_ list, or in the Folio list of Shakespearian players, and that he was described as a ‘fellow’ by Phillips in 1605 hardly takes the matter further. He may have held a relation to the King’s men analogous to that of Martin Slater to Queen Anne’s men. After 1605 nothing is heard of him.[604]

The terms of the patent imply that it was issued during a suspension of playing through plague. Probably this had followed hard upon the suspension at Elizabeth’s death. The company travelled, being found at Bath, Coventry, and Shrewsbury in the course of 1602–3. A misplaced Ipswich entry of 30 May 1602 may belong to 1603. The visits to Oxford and Cambridge referred to on the title-page of the 1603 edition of _Hamlet_ must also have taken place in this year, if they did not take place in 1601. On 2 December 1603 the company were summoned from Mortlake to perform before the King at Lord Pembroke’s house of Wilton.[605]

During the winter of 1603–4 the company gave eight more plays at Court, a larger number than Elizabeth had ever called for. They took place on 26, 27, 28, and 30 December 1603 and on 1 January and 2 and 19 February 1604. On New Year’s Day there were two performances, one before James, the other before Prince Henry. The plague had not yet subsided by 8 February, and James gave his men £30 as a ‘free gifte’ for their ‘mayntenaunce and releife’ till it should ‘please God to settle the cittie in a more perfecte health’. One of the plays of this winter was _The Fair Maid of Bristow_. Another, produced before the end of 1603, was probably Ben Jonson’s _Sejanus_. For alleged popery and treason in this play Jonson was haled before the Privy Council by the Earl of Northampton, but there is nothing to show that the players were implicated. The principal actors in _Sejanus_ were Burbadge, Shakespeare, Phillips, Heminges, Sly, Condell, John Lowin, and Alexander Cooke. This is Shakespeare’s last appearance in the cast of any play. He may have ceased to act, while remaining a member of the company and its poet. The names of Lowin and Cooke are new. Lowin had been with Worcester’s men in 1602–3. Cooke had probably begun his connexion with the company as an apprentice to Heminges. The identification of him with the ‘Sander’ of Strange’s men in 1590 is more than hazardous. The Induction to Marston’s _Malcontent_, published in 1604, records the names of Burbadge, who played Malevole, Condell, Sly, Lowin, Sincler, and a Tire-man. Sincler was probably still only a hired man. Nothing further is heard of him. This Induction seems to have been written by John Webster to introduce the presentation by the King’s men of _The Malcontent_, which was really a Chapel play. The transaction is thus explained:[606]

_Sly._ I wonder you would play it, another company having
interest in it?

_Condell._ Why not Malevole in folio with us, as Jeronimo
in decimo-sexto with them? They taught us a name for our play;
we call it _One for Another_.

The play of _Jeronimo_, which the Chapel are here accused of taking, cannot be _The Spanish Tragedy_, which was an Admiral’s play, and is not very likely to have been the ‘comedy of Jeronimo’ which Strange’s men had in 1592, and which was evidently related to _The Spanish Tragedy_ and may be expected to have remained with it. It might be the extant _First Part of Jeronimo_, written perhaps for the Chamberlain’s men about 1601–2, when Jonson was revising _The Spanish Tragedy_ for the Admiral’s. A reference in T. M.’s _Black Book_ shows that _The Merry Devil of Edmonton_, which belonged to the company, was already on the stage by 1604.[607]

The coronation procession of James, deferred on account of the plague, went through London on 15 March 1604, and the Great Wardrobe furnished each of the King’s players with four and a half yards of red cloth. The same nine men are specified in the warrant as in the patent of 1603, and their names stand next those of various officers of the Chamber. They did not, however, actually walk in the procession.[608] From 9 to 27 August 1604, they were called upon in their official capacity as Grooms of the Chamber to form part of the retinue assigned to attend at Somerset House upon Juan Fernandez de Velasco, Duke of Frias and Constable of Castile, who was in England as Ambassador Extraordinary for the negotiation of a peace with Spain. The descriptions of his visit, which have been preserved, do not show that any plays were given before him.[609]

The company were at Oxford between 7 May and 16 June 1604. About 18 December they had got into trouble through the production of a tragedy on _Gowry_, always a delicate subject with James.[610] But this did not interfere with a long series of no less than eleven performances which they gave at Court between 1 November 1604 and 12 February 1605, and of which the Revels Accounts fortunately preserve the names.[611] The series included one play, _The Spanish Maze_, of which nothing is known; two by Ben Jonson, _Every Man In his Humour_ and _Every Man Out of his Humour_; and seven by Shakespeare, _Othello_, _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, _Measure for Measure_, _The Comedy of Errors_, _Henry V_, _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, and _The Merchant of Venice_, which was given twice. _Othello_ and _Measure for Measure_ had probably been produced for the first time during 1604, but the rest of the list suggests that opportunity was being taken to revive a number of Elizabethan plays unknown to the new sovereigns. This is borne out by the terms of a letter from Sir Walter Cope to Lord Southampton with regard to the performance of _Love’s Labour ’s Lost_.[612]

Between 4 May 1605, when he made his will, and 13 May, when it was proved, died Augustine Phillips. Unlike Pope, he was full of kindly remembrances towards the King’s men. He appointed Heminges, Burbadge, and Sly overseers of the will. He left legacies to his ‘fellows’ Shakespeare, Condell, Fletcher, Armin, Cowley, Cooke, and Nicholas Tooley; to the hired men of the company; to his ‘servant’ Christopher Beeston; to his apprentice James Sands, and to his late apprentice Samuel Gilburne. We have here practically a full list of the company. The name of Nicholas Tooley is new, unless indeed he was the ‘Nick’ of Strange’s men in 1592. He speaks of Richard Burbadge in his will as his ‘master’ and may have been his apprentice. The use of the term ‘fellow’ suggests that Tooley and Cooke were now sharers in the company. On the other hand Lowin, who is not named among the ‘fellows’, may still have been only a hired man. Beeston’s legacy is doubtless in memory of former service as hired man or apprentice; he was in 1605 and for long after with the Queen’s men. Samuel Gilburne is recorded as a Shakespearian actor in the 1623 Folio, but practically nothing is known of him or of James Sands. The exact legal disposal of the interest held by Phillips in the Globe subsequently became matter of controversy, but in effect it remained from 1605 to 1613 with his widow and her second husband, and was thus alienated from the company.

On some date before Michaelmas in 1605 the King’s men visited Barnstaple, and on 9 October they were at Oxford. This year saw the publication of _The Fair Maid of Bristow_ and of _The London Prodigal_, which was assigned on its title-page to Shakespeare. To it I also assign Shakespeare’s _Macbeth_ and _King Lear_.

Ten Court plays were given in the winter of 1605–6, but the dates are not recorded. Three more were given in the summer of 1606 during the visit of the King of Denmark to James, which lasted from 7 July to 11 August, and then the company seem to have gone on tour. They were at Oxford between 28 and 31 July, at Leicester in August, at Dover between 6 and 24 September, at Saffron Walden and Maidstone during 1605–6, and at Marlborough in 1606. To this year I assign Shakespeare’s _Antony and Cleopatra_ and _Coriolanus_, and to the earlier part of it Ben Jonson’s _Volpone_, in which the principal actors were Burbadge, Condell, Sly, Heminges, Lowin, and Cooke.